FanSided’s AL Reliever of the Year Award: Jose Valverde

Note: Every writer who is a member of the FanSided Family was given the opportunity to vote for who we thought deserved to win multiple awards this season. The awards we voted for were Manager of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Reliever of the Year, Starting Pitcher of the Year, and of course MVP (Most Valuable Player). Every writer for a team in the AL only voted for AL players. Each winner will be announced on FanSided’s general baseball blog, Call to the Pen. However, I will also post the winner every time it is released on the site, give you a link to the article, and throw in my own opinions.

The Reliever of the Year as voted by us FanSided writers have been released. I was asked to vote for my top 3 AL Relievers and yay for me, my number one and number two votes turned out to be all of FanSided’s number one and number two votes! Finally, I voted in sync with the group!

See my votes and the winners after the jump.

Number one was easy for me. Detroit Tigers’ closer Jose Valverde. He was a perfect 49 for 49. I don’t care about how many strikeouts he did (or didn’t) have and how many walks he issued and how many base runners allowed and all that shit. When he had a lead, he closed the game. Every. Single. Time. He finished with a 2.24 ERA and 1.19 WHIP, which are solid numbers. There’s definitely a debate going on as to if the save stat is really that important or not. It’s definitely a glorified and overrated stat, but it’s still the most important one for a closer, in my opinion. That’s what the closer is there for To save games.

Number two was another easy one. It’s a guy we all know and hate on a team we all know and hate. Mariano Rivera. But it’s hard to hate this guy besides the fact that he wears pinstripes. He’s the best closer in the history of MLB as he earned his 602nd save this season, an all-time record. He’s also an all-around good guy. But, the Orioles typically give him so problems. So…there’s that. He fell 13 points behind Valverde in the voting.

Number three, I didn’t really care about. I picked someone random: Brandon League. Not that he isn’t good but in retrospect, I should have just picked Jim Johnson to show some home love. He finished 9th on the list with 3 points, one of them being from me. He finished with a 2.79 ERA and 37 saves out of 42. The number three winner among FanSided writers was another Yankee: David Robertson. He had really great numbers this season. A 1.08 ERA. A 1.13 WHIP. 100 strikeouts. In 88.2 innings. He was a very far third from Rivera, but definitely deserving.

Other interesting notes: Jim Johnson finished tenth on the list with 2 points and ex-Oriole and still beloved Koji Uehara finished 7th on the list despite struggling in Texas with 4 points. Good luck to him in the World Series, I’ll be rooting for that guy to win a ring. He deserves it.

To read the full article, go here!

Also, for the NL Reliever of the Year, Craig Kimbrel of the Atlanta Braves won his second straight FanSided awards. He recently won Rookie of the Year and took this award by a landslide as well. Coming in second place, 31 points behind Kimbrel, is Milwaukee Brewers’ reliever John Axford. Finally, Joel Hanrahan came in third with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

To read the rest of that article and more on the top 3, go here!

Other award posts:

Rookie of the Year

Manager of the Year